Though these statements sound as if they could be uttered by just about any of the countless stars of reality competitions currently on television today, there is one crucial difference: These young men and women are wearing ballet tights and costumes. They are the dramatis personae of “Breaking Pointe,” a six-episode reality series making its debut on Thursday night on CW that offers an in-depth look at the inner workings of Ballet West, the esteemed ballet company based in Salt Lake City.

Development on “Breaking Pointe” began a year ago, but the idea for the show started long before that.

“I had a couple of real obsessions with worlds I wanted to explore dramatically,” Jane Tranter, the head of BBC Worldwide Productions, which is producing the show, said recently. “One was ballet, the other was a convent.”

Each, Ms. Tranter said, offered “a world which is a hidden world: there’s what the public sees, and what happens underneath.”

As it turned out, the dance world proved more readily accessible, thanks to both Ms. Tranter’s own experience and lucky timing. BBC Worldwide Productions also produces “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC (which was based on the British series “Strictly Come Dancing”).

“The attitude toward ballroom dancing when I first started talking to people about it was not so different from the attitude toward ballet,” she said. “It’s not as rarefied, but people thought it was in its own way as eccentric a dance form to put on screen. And look what happened to that.”

When the movie “Black Swan” came out, Ms. Tranter said she knew the time was right to seize upon the new awareness of ballet in popular culture.

CW officials felt the same way, and the channel picked up “Breaking Pointe” without a pilot. The channel’s target audience is women 18 to 34, and it excels at “showing young people’s lives slightly heightened, holding a microscope up to a heightened world that feels really fascinating, particularly to women,” said Kristen Vadas, CW’s head of reality development.

“The world of ballet fits right into that pot,” she added. “Ballet holds such a kind of aspirational, beautiful and in some ways unattainable place, particularly in a young girl’s mind.”

Getting “Breaking Pointe” off the ground proved to be a lengthy process. Casting producers considered about 15 ballet schools, including those of the San Francisco Ballet, the Boston Ballet and Juilliard, before narrowing the pool down to a final three. Ballet West’s prestige and social structure — with only 40 dancers and a relatively isolated setting in Salt Lake City, the company is extremely tight-knit — were key selling points.

“We knew we were getting a certain quality of dancer, and also a pressure cooker environment front and center,” Ms. Vadas said of choosing Ballet West, which is 49 years old and widely considered one of the top regional companies in the United States. “We really wanted to capture not only the intense beauty and sacrifice of the actual dance part of it, but, for the CW audience, more of the soap opera element.”

The show focuses on seven company members at varying levels in its ranks, including the 32-year-old Christiana Bennett, a much admired principal artist; the brothers Ronald and Rex Tilton (who both have romantic relationships with ballerinas on the show); Ronnie Underwood, a self-professed gear head and “most unlikely ballet dancer you will ever meet”; and the promising 19-year-old ingénue Beckanne Sisk.

The show begins during the delicate time of contract renewals, and, in an unusually open turn, Adam Sklute, the artistic director, lets cameras into his office as he promotes dancers and releases one. He explains on screen that in a functional company, dancers must know that “they’re special, but also that they’re expendable.”

For the charismatic, chatty Mr. Sklute, who has been Ballet West’s artistic director since 2007, participating in “Breaking Pointe” was always appealing.

“There are so many misconceptions about dancers,” Mr. Sklute said when he was in New York recently to judge the Youth America Grand Prix competition and spoke about the show and its producers. “They were very clear about what they wanted to do: they wanted to paint a true-to-life picture of what the ballet world really is. Of course there were concerns, but I really liked the message behind the project and their whole approach.”

(That he was appointed a creative consultant for the show and knew it would bring attention to the company probably helped motivate him too. The production company would not say whether Mr. Sklute or the dancers were compensated.)

Convincing his company was another matter entirely.

“Adam didn’t really reveal his position on it,” said Rex Tilton, a 24-year-old demisoloist. “He approached us and kind of put it in our ballpark to figure out if we wanted to go through with it.”

Ms. Bennett said: “I was not convinced in the beginning. I thought it was a very interesting idea — and one which is long overdue — but there’s a lot to weigh. I’m more of a quiet, withdrawn person, so I was very wary.”

Though Mr. Tilton said there was still “some negativity” about the show among Ballet West members, a majority of the company ultimately voted in favor of it.

The first episode bears certain recognizable CW imprints — a buoyant indie-rock soundtrack, romantic relationships front and center — but equal attention goes to the day-to-day happenings of Ballet West itself. Over the course of the series, viewers will see the dancers prepare and compete for parts in a season that includes “Don Quixote” and a repertory program with Balanchine’s “Emeralds,” Petipa’s “Paquita” and Jiri Kylian’s “Petite Mort.”

Ms. Tranter said she specifically picked cameramen with “sensitivity and the ability to dissolve quickly into the background.”

Ms. Vadas of CW said of the dancers: “At the end of the day, they still have to work together, dance together and support each other. There’s a fine line of getting great TV and respecting that these are their lives and careers.”

As for the dancers themselves, awaiting the premiere of “Breaking Pointe” is proving similar to waiting in the wings for a difficult onstage entrance. Ms. Bennett, who is portrayed as somewhat of a single-minded perfectionist on the show, said she knew to expect some drama.

“I’m sure I come across as a little: ‘Whoa, she’s a nut case! Her bun’s a little too tight!,’ ” she said with a laugh. “But I assure you, I’m normal.”

Correction: June 5, 2012

An article on Wednesday about “Breaking Pointe,” a new reality series on CW that is produced by BBC Worldwide Productions, misstated the timing of the involvement of Jane Tranter, head of BBC Worldwide Productions, in the ABC show “Dancing With the Stars.” The show, also produced by BBC Worldwide Productions, had its premiere in 2005 and Ms. Tranter became head of the BBC unit in 2009; thus she was not an early figure in its development. The article also misspelled the surname of CW’s head of reality development at one point. As the article correctly noted elsewhere, she is Kristen Vadas, not Vandas.

A version of this article appears in print on May 30, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: They Already Know They Can Dance, and They Want to Be Stars. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe